Gadgetory

it's Tuesday februari first I'm Natali Morris and it's time to get loaded sadly the internet is still down in Egypt after the last week of turmoil and protest Google and Twitter have come up with a way around the communication cut they've launched speak to tweet it lets anyone with a voice connection dial an international phone number and speak their tweet into the service google will translate that to text and tweet it with the hashtag egypt it is really interesting to follow this hashtag knowing that some of these tweets are coming from behind an international firewall but i will say this i know you didn't ask me for this opinion but i'm going to give it anyway despite the internet being down this uprising is unprecedented more people than ever have come together in such unexpected ways which makes me think that sometimes we might overstate the power of digital communications sure it's been inconvenient this lack of communication but it hasn't stopped what is organically fueled by real life community I think sometimes we forget that we can be just as powerful offline as we can be online moving on face book certainly makes long flights go faster the social network will be free to access on seven major airlines during domestic flights this means that if you open your browser and go to Facebook on these flights it's free if you want to go somewhere else on the web you have to pay for the gogo inflight internet service but what if you want to click on a link through facebook I don't know the answer to that but I do know that this promotion will be good for the month of februari facebook also may be launching a comment system this would mean that you could use Facebook as the engine behind the comments you want to leave on a blog or a website google has something similar that lets you use your google ID to login to a blog comment but those comments don't necessarily go on a Google profile whereas i can imagine facebook would integrate your comments into your feed a new class action suit claims that AT&T systematically overstates the amount of data it bills to iphone customers when you visit a website it's unclear exactly how much data you're using on your phone we kind of have to trust a tease estimation well some customers don't at all trust AT&T they allege that 80 overstates the number by anywhere from seven to fourteen percent the consulting firm representing this suit proved this by buying a new phone turning off all email push notifications and apps and left the phone idle for ten days the account was built for 2292 kilobytes over 35 transactions you gotta admit that looks bad apple is not getting more lacks about its appstore policies in fact just the opposite the company is getting more strict about what it allows in the App Store and has told certain developers like Sony that it can no longer sell ebooks in their apps or give customers access to purchases that they've made outside the App Store Sony's EV tarap was rejected which is inexplicable because amazon's kindle has an e reader app so does barnes & noble and borders and several others Apple told Sony that the in-app purchases must all go through Apple in President Obama's State of the Union address last week he specifically mentioned Facebook as the kind of innovation this country needs this week the Obama administration launched startup America a national campaign aimed at promoting more entrepreneurship just like this the foundation will be run by AOL founder Steve Case and will look to help fund good ideas in technology startups that's your news of the day I will be on vacation until the end of next week so you will be in the very good hands with Marc Lucia and Jeff Bakalar until then if you want more about any of our stories today visit cnet com / loaded I'm Natali Morris for cnet and you've just been loaded